With her runaway-success blog, now turned book, Parenting: Illustrated With Crappy Pictures, writer and illustrator Amber Dusick offers an irreverent take on parenting’s less-than-perfect side. We recently chatted with Dusick about life as a working mom, how she creates those perfectly-crappy drawings, and finding the humor in life’s little catastrophes.

Your illustrations depict some of the most trying and cringe-worthy parenting scenarios, yet they’re also incredibly funny. How do you manage to find the humor in everyday disasters? Well, it’s after I’ve survived it that I can find it funny. The next day, or the next week it’s funny. At the time, I’m miserable just like anyone else. [Laughs.] And now that I have the blog, of course, I can console myself by thinking: Oh, this will make good material for later.

Speaking of illustrations, you call your drawings “crappy,” but they’re not bad! Is your goal simply to illustrate your own life the way that a child would? The drawings look the way they do mainly because of the way that I create them: With my index finger on the track pad of the laptop. Which is a little self-limiting when it comes to artistic expression. But when I first started drawing for the blog, I was doing it late at night in the dark when I was up nursing my youngest—I had a laptop propped up next to me, and it was just the easiest way to do it. If I were to draw on pencil and paper, they illustrations would certainly look different.

Your blog was a great success after it launched in 2011. Why do you think your work has struck a chord with so many parents? The irony is that I was just doing it for myself—I wasn’t trying to build an audience or make a successful online business, I was just venting. But I think partly, the response was because all of the other parents reading my blog were just as frustrated as I was. And even though the blog depicts a lot of negative situations, my own tone isn’t negative—it’s funny, it’s silly. Constant complaining just gets old. Instead, it’s about finding the funny and the meaning in those moments of misery, which is honestly what a lot of parenthood is about anyway.

I love the final chapter, “The 50 Laws of Crappy Parenting.” In my opinion, it’s the definitive list of the Murphy’s Laws of raising kids. Do you have a favorite chapter or anecdote from the book? I think my favorite is story of the road trip we took from Los Angeles to San Francisco. It was supposed to be a fun trip to celebrate my husband’s birthday, but of course it ended up being just the worst trip ever. Seriously, it was so awful that we still talk about how bad it was. So of course, in retrospect, it’s just hilarious. And because of that, in a way, it’s become sort of a cherished memory.

First your blog, now a book—all written with two small children at home. How did you do it? I had a lot of help from coffee. [Laughs.] I highly recommend it. On weekends, my husband would give me time to write by taking the kids out of the house for the afternoon. But the vast majority of the book was completed after my kids went to bed. They’d go to sleep at nine, and I’d stay up until midnight or 3 AM working. I did that nearly every night for six months. Most of the blog is written during that time too, except for the few hours that my mother watches the kids during the week.

As a work-from-home mom, what’s your perspective on the whole “Lean In” vs. “Lean Out” debate that’s happening right now about women, work, and motherhood? I think everybody just has to find out what works for them. This arrangement works for me even though it’s brutal. But I wouldn’t have it any other way, even if I could—and technically, I could send my kids to daycare. I don’t have to homeschool. But I’ve made the conscious choice to stay home even after the blog has taken off. My kids will always come first, and for me, that’s what’s important.

AMG/Parade Digital

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